my sun, my stars
by coffee-not-decaf
Summary: "The doctors…the nurse…they say there's still almost no chance of you ever waking up again."


"Morning, Arthur!"

"Morning, Gwen," Arthur responded automatically from his position curled up in the hard, uncomfortable, plastic chair next to the bedside. His eyes flickered across the room to her smiling, ever cheerful form and away from the rugby match that the television was playing.

"I had a great night last night," she told him as she fluffed the pillows on the bed. "Leon and I had our first date – he's a good bloke, really solid, absolute gentlemen. I don't know why I never noticed him before."

"I don't either," Arthur replied with a roll of his eyes. "I've only been telling you that he's besotted with you for the past eight months."

"Anyway, I just came in to check on your status, see if there are any changes," Gwen kept talking as she scribbled a few notes on her clipboard that was always within her arm's reach. "I think Merlin will be by today. I know he's not been in to see you for a while."

Arthur lifted his head, attention piqued. "Merlin? Are you sure?"

"Oh, Arthur," Gwen sighed as she stepped away from the bed to look down upon Arthur's sleeping form, IV tubes everywhere, pumping nutrients into his body that hadn't moved for nearly a year. "Wake up soon."

"I'll try," Arthur said dully as he stared at his own nearly lifeless body. "Just like I have been."

"See you tomorrow," Gwen smiled back sadly, but not at Arthur, the real Arthur that could see and hear her, but the unconscious shape beneath him. She headed out the door and into the rest of the hospital away from Arthur's private ward.

Arthur cursed when she was out of earshot – not that she could hear him anyway, but it was a force of habit not to swear in front of a lady. Every day, every goddamn day for eight months straight, this had been his existence. Sitting here, in this bloody awful chair, alternating between watching crappy television reruns and watching his own weak, useless body that would not come out of its coma, one of his only reprieves being his nurse's insistence on conversation to keep him feeling at home.

Thank God for Gwen. She was perhaps the last remaining string of Arthur's sanity.

"Hi, Arthur," a subdued voice filled the room as the sound of a door slamming filled Arthur's ears.

He glanced upward, his face splitting into a smile. "Merlin," he grinned, but then remembered that it had been at least a month since Merlin had last come to see him, and he scowled. "Where the hell of you been, you bastard?"

He felt a bit guilty about that last bit, especially since Merlin looked absolutely wrecked. His clothes were even more rumpled than usual, and the dark circles under his lightless eyes indicated that he hadn't had a decent night's sleep in weeks.

Concern filtered through Arthur as he studied Merlin, who was now looking down at the bed and studying Arthur – still not the right Arthur, but Arthur all the same. His expression was one of pure sadness and longing, and Arthur wanted nothing more than to reach out and press his hand to Merlin's cheek. He didn't dare, though.

Instead, he stood up and circled around the bed to stand next to him, sighing heavily as he walked. "Sorry. That wasn't fair. Although you aren't being very fair either, not coming to visit in this long. Forgot about me, did you? Forgot about your poor, unconscious boyfriend that was in a horrible car wreck and is now stuck here in a coma?"

Merlin obviously didn't hear Arthur's angry ranting, for he ran a hand lightly down Arthur's jawline. "Missed you."

"Well, I didn't miss you," Arthur kicked Merlin's leg and not at all gently, but of course Merlin didn't feel a thing. He never did. No one ever did. "I've been perfectly lovely while you were away. Watched lots of sport. Talked to Gwen quite a bit, although our conversations were pretty one-sided. And I get to look at my own face every hour of every day. Even without consciousness I'm bleeding gorgeous, but you already knew that."

"I'm sorry about how long I've been gone," Merlin kept talking, and a bit of Arthur's anger melted away. "I…I wasn't having an easy time with everything."

"And yet you visited every day without fail for the first six months," Arthur said grouchily. "What changed?"

"I never forgot you, I promise," Merlin said quietly, his fingers now ghosting along the unconscious Arthur's arm. "My...my mother. She got sick, too. Cancer. I've been over in America, visiting her while she went through chemo. It's been a really rotten year, hasn't it?"

"God, Merlin," Arthur said, reaching a hand out only to let it fall at his side. "I...I didn't know. You could have told me!"

But he couldn't, Arthur knew that Merlin was entirely unaware of the fact that Arthur could hear his every word. Still, when Gwen came visiting, she told him every single aspect of her life, even though she and Arthur had never truly met – not face to face, anyway, even though Arthur could safely say he knew her better than most of her friends probably did.

Merlin had never been big on the whole sharing and caring shtick, though, so Arthur could hardly place blame on him.

"The doctors…the nurse…they say there's still almost no chance of you ever waking up again," Merlin's voice became muffled, as if he was trying to choke back tears, and this time, Arthur gave into his impulse and grabbed Merlin's hand. He could feel the warm pulse of Merlin's wrist, the calluses on his fingers, but he knew Merlin couldn't feel him in return.

"I know," Arthur said. "I already know. They only talk about it every day."

"They don't know you, though," Merlin said quietly, voice cracking on the end. "They don't know how strong you are, how you'll never give up."

"That's right," Arthur tried to smile. "I'm no quitter."

"And if you'll never give up, then I won't either," Merlin smiled down at Arthur, but it was far too watery for his liking. Merlin's smiles should be great bursts of joy and euphoria, things that lit up the world, not made Arthur feel like it was crashing and burning around him. "I'd wait forever for you, I hope you know."

"I do," Arthur felt his throat constricting.

Merlin pressed a kiss to Arthur's forehead. "Love you."

"I love you, too," Arthur bit his tongue to keep from shedding tears. He knew he could cry in this very nearly corporeal form – he hadn't been able to stop sobbing the night of the accident, when he was confused and desperate and wanted to know why Merlin, why Morgana and Uther, why everyone around him was in so much pain and why they couldn't see him or hear his voice.

It had been the worst night of his life.

His less than life. Because he wasn't entirely sure that it was life that he was living anymore.

"Do you remember when we first met?" Merlin had sunk to his knees as he grasped the coma-induced Arthur's hand. The real Arthur kept holding onto his other one as he followed him downward.

"Of course I do," Arthur couldn't help the small smile that made his upper lip quirk up in memory.

"First day at uni, and the all-encompassing luck that is me got a prat of the highest proportions as my roommate," Merlin shook his head as tears flowed freely from his eyes. Arthur attempted to wipe them away, but his fingers had no effect on the flesh. "I called you an ass and you called me an idiot, and I told you that it would probably be best if we stayed the hell away from each other."

"That lasted about two weeks," Arthur leaned his head against Merlin's shoulder. "Then you walked on in me singing along to Barry Manilow when you were supposed to be in the library all night. You told me I had a great voice and I told you to fuck off because I was embarrassed. But you pestered me incessantly about it for ages, and made me audition for that stupid musical even though I was a business major...but you looked so proud of me when after I did it, and I just...It made it worth it. Then you kissed me like the sap that you are."

"Then we kissed and I never looked back," Merlin's eloquence was a bit greater than Arthur's, but Arthur knew his story-telling skills were superior. He wished he could say something, something that Merlin could respond to, but his attempts would be futile. "Still haven't. So come back, love. I want to hear you sing again."

Merlin was crying much more openly now, and Arthur felt Merlin's hand slip out of his grasp and reach up to touch Arthur's body instead of his soul, to clasp the sleeping Arthur's hand between his own through broken sobs, clinging to Arthur like a lifeline.

Arthur was sniffling, too, and he let his arms encircle Merlin's waist as he buried his head into his shoulder.

"Hold me tighter," Arthur whispered into his skin. "I can't feel you."


End file.
